Obamulation
Granite Workers to Get Part of Stimulus Plan – Speaker Pelosi has announced that, under the stimulus plan now before Congress, a special commission will be formed to find a suitable mountain near Mt. Rushmore to carve the likeness of Barack Obama. This will be a big boon for the granite workers of America who have been struggling as the need for granite countertops in suburban kitchens has declined dramatically with the foreclosure and credit crisis. “President Obama is such a transformational figure that we believe he should have his own mountain sculpture near Mt. Rushmore”, said the Speaker.
Obama Inks Book deal for White House Memoirs – After a brutal bidding war between America’s top publishers, Simon and Schuster has purchased the rights to President Obama’s memoirs for a cool $1 billion. Simon and Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy said in a statement that, “We believe that in eight years this book will beat the #1 bestseller of all time, the Bible.” She went on to say that, while the company does not have the $1 billion to pay President Obama, they hope to have raised it by 2016 through “a series of bake sales and car washes to be held around the country.”
SAG Travels Dangerous Road
Will the Screen Actors Guild do to Los Angeles what the United Auto Workers did to Detroit?
It’s starting to feel that way. Consider the situation.
The most radical faction in the 120,000-member SAG is in the leadership. They want authority to strike. A couple of weeks ago, moderates tried to negate the leaders but got beaten back. It’s unclear that the leaders will get their way, but the point is those most agitating to strike still have a leading role in this drama.
Besides this internal blood feud, SAG has a second fight that it believes is the big one. That is the external fight with the studios over how to divvy up revenue streams, including future new-media residuals.
But has SAG lost sight of the fact that it is in a third fight? That third fight really is the big one, because it is about survival.
OMG, Text Law Makes me LOL!
The other day, while sitting in rush hour traffic, I looked around and noticed several drivers talking on their cell phones or texting while they waited for the opportunity to move forward a few feet.
Then in struck me—too many vehicular laws designed to enhance safety are completely ignored and almost impossible to enforce.
After reaching this conclusion, I asked a police officer friend about enforcing the new ban on texting while driving. “It’s very hard,” he said. “To actually catch someone in the act, you almost have to be in their car watching them to prove that they weren’t just looking for a phone number to call.”
So there’s your alibi (at least in this particular jurisdiction): just explain that you were trying to locate a phone number in your mobile device.
What about citing drivers who talk on their phones without the required hands free apparatus? “That’s easier to enforce, but often there are other crimes taking place that take priority,” commented my friend in blue. “Also, the driver can say that the conversation was on speaker.”
Fiddling Away While Rome Burns
There is a popular misconception about how the Great Depression (we may have to rename that soon) actually occurred, starting in 1929. Most think it all happened in one sad day that Fall when the market crashed and then there were bread lines, soup kitchens, and all those pathetic black and white photos. Actually, it was much longer and more protracted as the many economic and business gurus of the day argued and dickered and dithered over what to do and how to do it – kind of like we are doing right now on both the US national level and the California state level.
World War I used to be called the Great War; then we had World War II. The Great Depression that Boomers of my age grew up hearing about endlessly from our parents and grandparents may be seen as Depression I shortly and what we are living through right now may shortly be known as Depression II. You may have noticed, as Depression II unfolds further, that we are not exactly in agreement about what to do about it. People like Robert Reich and Paul Krugman are screaming from the rooftops that this is a whole lot worse than anybody imagined and that Obama’s current $800 plus Billion Stimulus Package, now delayed until mid-February as Congressional Wordsmiths have at it, as huge as it may be, is actually just too mild and modest for the conflagration that we face.